Here’s a helpful way to look at the Trump people who’ve been getting shamed, shunned or spoken to bluntly but nonviolently in public:
They’re toxins. And the antibodies of society are finally rejecting them now that they’ve made its condition so serious.
It’s a healthy response to poison—call it American Ebola, as opposed to Trump’s bullshit “American carnage.”
Just picture the scene from Fantastic Voyage where antibodies are attacking Raquel Welch, but instead of a skin-tight white suit, she’s wearing a Gestapo uniform.
Over the weekend, someone called Steve Bannon a “piece of trash” in a bookstore. Normally, I wouldn’t get between a conservative and a book any more than I’d turn the channel if one accidentally landed on Cosmos. “See? It’s round and more than 6,000 years old. And if you’d rather watch the version with the white scientist, that’s’ OK.” Anyway, calling the racist ex-Trump strategist trash is less a shaming than a straight description.
Also over the weekend, protesters hounded Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as he left a Kentucky restaurant, asking “Where are the babies, Mitch?” among other things. I wonder if he had to comfort himself by watching The Birth of a Nation when he got home. But since no one has played dirtier for his party, to the long-term detriment of his country, I’m OK with him starting to reap a tiny fraction of what he’s sown.
Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Newly unemployed EPA head Scott Pruitt. Right-wing personality and Dunning-Kruger Effect spokesmodel Tomi Lahren. They’ve all gotten a little push from the antibodies, recently.
The incidents reached enough of a critical mass by Monday that the failing, liberal Washington Post that Trump detests weighed in thusly: it framed the Trump aides as victims, didn’t bother much with their unconscionable acts that sparked the protests, and then—in the interest of balance—quoted Newt Fucking Gingrich, who called the protesters “barbarians trying to impose totalitarian behavior by sheer force.”
While you’re mopping up the puddle you just made, I’ll note that the Notorious NFG was pretty much the OG of scorched-earth political incivility, and if his hypocrisy manifested itself physically, you could see it from Earth’s orbit along with the Great Wall of China. And his head.
These mild, nonviolent reactions from human antibodies against human toxins quickly spawned a nationwide #civility debate that would be ironic if it weren’t simply moronic. The nitwits stoking the phony debate either don’t get or don’t want you to get that these actions are the exact opposite of incivility: they’re from people reacting to horrifying violations of decency. Finally. After the sickness has incubated and its severity is manifesting.
For encouraging these confrontations, Maxine Waters, the gutsy 79-year-old California Democrat, has been targeted by the usual bullies on the right who can never stand so much as a taste of their own medicine—but also by people on her own side. Fellow Democrats, as in Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who described Waters’ approach as “not American.”
Even liberal friends of mine have been scolds about it. And pointing out that the people getting their meals interrupted want to take away my friends’ Social Security didn’t change their minds.
The autonomic liberal response here is that reasonable people can disagree. But anyone from either side who says these nonviolent confrontations should stop for civility is a fool, an insider media hack, or trying a nasty form of gaslighting.
They say to vote instead. Sure. With gerrymandering, voter suppression, the laughably skewed electoral college, and Citizens United allowing extreme right-wingers to outspend Democrats by orders of magnitude. Also, Russia.
Not to mention the fact that a handful of corporations control nearly all media, where progressives have almost no presence anymore, and there’s such a taboo against simply calling things what they are that news outlets in the age of Trump are still wrestling with the word, “lie.”
Telling people to cool it and vote is like telling someone having a massive heart attack to modify his or her diet. Go fuck yourself.
These human toxins—Miller, Bannon, Sanders and the rest—aren’t rivals we happen to disagree with on some issues, and with whom we should maintain off-hours conviviality like the criminals in John Wick’s Continental Hotel or Warner Bros’ sheepdog and coyote who clock out together after a day of mayhem.
They’re deeply immoral people doing terrible, destructive, harmful things on a massive scale. Lying daily to the American people. Stealing a Supreme Court seat while accusing Democrats of obstruction after spending two Obama terms setting an obstruction record. Stealing immigrant kids and babies from parents. Fleecing taxpayers while destroying the environment.
And don’t forget trying to take healthcare from millions, spreading racism, waging war on poor people, consumers and students; trying to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, treating the environment like the toilet in Trainspotting – along with supporting the most brazenly corrupt, dishonest, openly racist, dangerously incompetent, and most astonishingly uncivil president in American history.
This isn’t stuff to shake off at the end of a workday and go enjoy a meal.
I forgot to mention trying to destroy the social safety net.
And the Nazis.
And whizzing on our global allies while glad-handing murderous dictators.
And demonizing the free press that’s meant to burn these toxins in sunlight.
Making an unpleasant sushi experience for the perpetrators of this American Ebola is like your body realizing you’ve been swimming laps in the Cuyahoga River—the one that caught on fire—the last couple years. Our immune system has finally kicked in a little, although we still might still wind up in an iron lung. These human toxins don’t deserve a moment’s peace the rest of their poisonous lives, and it’s only time for the antibodies to multiply.
(Image Credits: DonkeyHotey)
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